


Points of Authority

by god_is_undead



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Crack Crossover, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Hux Has No Chill, Hux is Not Nice, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I Don't Even Know, I do what I want, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren is Not Nice, NOT planning on romance, Only it's not santa, Original Character-centric, Other, Politics, Real Life, Santa is Real, Sorry Not Sorry, Starkiller Base, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Why Did I Write This?, existential crises abound, i am trash, just the drama is more on earth for the moment, kylo ren shouldn't be allowed near a microphone, political science fiction, potty mouth, sort of not really, starts out oc centric then gets much more even in dispersion, the earth is not just america
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-10-01 08:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10184600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/god_is_undead/pseuds/god_is_undead
Summary: TIE-Fighters appear over some of Earth's cities. It goes about as well as you would think from there. It's not shiny. Then an international delegation is sent out to parley.Hey, at least all that time spent on the minutiae of Star Wars is suddenly something people look for on resumes.*An insane take on the 'what happens if X popped up IRL.' Probably the only Star Wars fic you will ever read that also involves the UN. Seriously though UN, avocado green chairs?





	

**Author's Note:**

> I would apologize for writing this but...nah.
> 
> I also demonstrate a willingness to use acronyms. I am not going to not use them, so, definitions at the bottom.
> 
> Next chapter--more showing, less telling. This is the set-up chapter. Plus we meet way more characters.

It was the hangover, otherwise Lib would have to admit she was seeing a TIE-Fighter about half the size of a postage stamp rolling slow and curious over the pointy tip of the Washington Monument in the cloudless early afternoon. _But I've only got a little bit of a headache, so what gives?_ She straightened a little despite her general bleary skepticism, her head turned slightly to one side, eyes averted behind a pair of dark sunglasses, her purpose in being at this meeting momentarily forgotten. _Well, when you see a fucking TIE-Fighter, you can be a good person and not be distracted_.

Good thing her purpose wasn't to speak, but if the people they were visiting had been looking for an opportunity to shoot her boss while Lib was staring off into la la land, Deanne might have been in trouble. Luckily for the Congresswoman, NGO reps who wanted public endorsements for their education projects in Angola were not likely to shoot anyone.

 _I've finally lost it_ , Lib decided. _Or else, there was something in that fucking moonshine last night_. One was as likely as the other in all reality, but she had never heard of such a delayed effect, even for bathtub gin.

She had to make herself look away and back to work, because TIE-Fighters just did not buzz DC. Because that would be crazy. Because TIE-Fighters were fictional. And also, because ever since 9/11, at the very first sign of—

Despite herself, Lib flinched at the keening roar of jet engines somewhere in the distance above, building volume in a matter of seconds until the sound blasted over their heads, shocking almost everyone into ducking as two F-18s streaked overhead, strangely close to the ground.

Lib, who had worked on an aircraft carrier years ago, long before her hip started to hate her, and knew very well what an F-18 sounded like at even closer quarters than that, did not do more than wince hard and reach up to cover her ears, taken off her guard.

But she snapped her head around to look. The TIE-Fighter banked sharply and rose, accelerating, much more nimbly than either F-18, both of which had to swing wide to pursue the ship skyward.

 _That thing really does move_ , Lib thought, gaping in open disbelief as everyone else on the veranda spun around in surprise. The TIE easily outpaced its pursuers, widening the gap between them by almost three inches a second, seen from even this distance. From the leftmost F-18, two telltale bursts broke free, and missiles twined ahead. Lib stopped breathing; her heart sprang into her throat. _Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ, they’ve fired live missiles over Washington, DC_.

At the same time, a hideous, pervasive, thundering wail rose up in the city that consumed all other noise. Lib had only heard an air raid siren once before; Prague still tested theirs every Wednesday. Man, that had been a weird experience, particularly since she hadn't been expecting it.

Evidently though, her boss, Deanne, had never heard one, and looked at Lib in bald confusion. _What is that_ , she read on Deanne’s lips.

“Get inside!” Lib shouted, to hardly any avail. Through a mixture of charades and pointing and LOUD—MOUTHED—WORDS Lib managed to convey to Deanne that she should seek shelter. The four NGO representatives took up with them, and Lib glanced at the office workers poking their heads out of their cubicles and offices curiously as they came inside, off the veranda, where they had been having a lunch meeting at the NGO’s office. “Everybody get away from the windows!” she barked.

“What is going on? What is that noise?” A tall, elegant man with olive skin demanded. It was definitely audible inside, though slightly muted.

“ _That_ is an air raid siren. Get away from the windows, would you?”

His dark eyes widened. “What?”

Lib clapped loudly as she spoke, startling the entire office. “Move people, come on! Away from the windows! Air raid sirens mean shit raining down from the sky, this is not a drill— _move your asses!_ ”

A second man poked his head out of the restroom. “Stop shouting, what do you want?” He sounded bored, but Lib wasn’t having any of it. _I just saw them fire off a missile at a TIE-Fighter. That wasn’t a fucking hallucination_.

“Because air raid siren,” she snapped back. “They don’t just turn those on for shits ‘n giggles. Everybody away from the windows.”

Their stunned, disbelieving reactions were frustrating in the extreme. The man just stared at her. “Air raid sirens? We have those? Why are they going off? What is that noise? Is that—”

“Because there’s shit up in the air and they just fired off missiles over the National Mall. So get away from the fucking windows.” Out of the corner of her eye, on a television set into the wall, she saw BREAKING NEWS flash red across the screen.

“ _What?_ ” he looked horrified. “How do you know that?” People were poking their heads over their cubicles, staring, peering either at her or at the television.

“Because we saw it, Derek,” piped in one of the NGO reps. “They were shooting at a ship from Star Wars. One of those—”

“Shelter. _First_ ,” Lib interjected, seeing everyone’s faces start to contort with appropriate levels of _you’ve got to be fucking kidding_. Such forwardness wasn’t in her nature and was mostly an affectation for her work, but she was absolutely focused on her job and could come off as intense, because she had to overcompensate. “Bullshit once you’re sheltered. _Go!_ ” Their reactions weren’t really her fault or their fault; the US was so utterly unfamiliar with violence on its own territory that people still reacted with bullheaded incredulity.

 _Not that I really know what the fuck to do in case of a fucking air raid because I’ve never needed to know that, but getting away from the windows sounds like a decent start_.

Twenty minutes later, they were all in the inner stairwell by the time the elegant man remembered that cell phones were a thing, and pulled his out when it screeched at him.

“It’s the news,” he said to the assembled faces.

“Is it about what happened?” a Hispanic woman asked, then pulled her own phone out of her pocket. “Wow—so many notifications—” After that, everyone seemed to remember they lived in the 21st century. Deanne was texting furiously but hadn’t seen fit to share anything with Lib, though was content to allow herself to be herded around for her own safety for the moment.

Lib pulled out her own phone. There was a fucking list of messages and alerts, from four different news sources and every messaging service she used.

“Fuck,” she whispered, joining the general, uneasy chatter that rose up.

 _‘Mysterious ship seen over Washington, DC, triggers shutdown; President in secure location.’ ‘Missiles fired over US capital.’ ‘Emergency session of—‘_ The list went on. The city had been frozen, federal buildings were on lockdown throughout the country.

She did have a series of messages from Hank, her immediate boss, telling her that DC had been put on lockdown and that they were to shelter in place until told otherwise; she was to keep eyes on the Congresswoman at all times. Aside from the order to shelter in place, that wasn’t new.

One last was different: Vika had sent her a text saying ‘call me.’

Lib stared at it for a long several seconds. Then she glanced at Deanne.

 _I can’t leave her. I can’t leave them, and I can’t call Vika while I’m in public_.

Frustrated by not being able to call her credible source, off of which she could choose to panic or calm down, being so close and yet so far, Lib bit the inside of her cheek. Why did this shit have to happen when she was on duty?

“There was a TIE-Fighter seen over London,” the same Hispanic lady announced incredulously, staring at her Samsung. “It’s all over Twitter! And—they’re saying the one over DC was the same thing. Seriously? A TIE-Fighter? Like in Star Wars? Is that what you guys saw?”

“So there was one seen in London, too?” asked the same NGO rep who had first spoken, with wide-eyed fascination. “Are those the only two places?”

“No. They’re also saying—Beijing, and supposedly Juba. That’s, uh, in South Sudan. It’s the capital of South Sudan. There’s videos of both. And London, too...”

“Juba?” Lib put in, bewildered. Why South Sudan? She could understand London and Beijing, both of which were huge population centers, but why the fuck would a TIE-Fighter pick DC or South Sudan? Important though it was, DC was not the biggest or most impressive population center on the eastern seaboard; it would have made more sense for New York to have been a target. South Sudan was…well, not exactly a sprawling metropolis, it was mostly rural, and Beijing wasn’t China’s biggest city.

She had to think about it for a little while, kick it around her head a bit, before it clicked.

 _They’re targeting political centers_ , she realized with a chill. And none of the places targeted were military sites. But that didn’t explain Juba, which wasn't particularly significant outside of a regional setting. _Second of all, how the fuck does a TIE-Fighter have any notion of Earth’s political centers?_

She had little else to do for the moment except speculate, after all. The stairwell was full of people and full of sounds, and she preferred to fold into herself whenever surrounded.

 _Somehow they learned. Well, let’s use Occam’s Razor—they read Aurebesh in those movies, but all someone would have to do was clue in on English-language radio and television broadcasting_. None of it was restricted. Given enough time it wouldn’t be that hard. 

Which implied that this was very much premeditated, operating off of an unknowable depth of familiarity, for no known purpose.

She felt the need to call Vika back and point this out, but she stopped herself. She wasn't the only science fiction-obsessed nerd she knew, and somebody smarter than her would notice and know what to do about it.

Some people even sent radio signals into space, trying to contact aliens. They wouldn’t have had to try very hard to find things out. _Great, well, we got the fucking Empire’s attention, apparently. Great job, guys._

 _Why does this feel like stirring the pot just to see what happens, sending a bunch of TIEs down and then withdrawing them without engaging as soon as they were challenged?_ She frowned, suspecting that _what happens_ would be a giant worldwide freak-out. _We should probably just be grateful that nobody saw shit over Pyongyang_.

Lib felt like she had taken crazy pills for even considering this to be a reality, for thinking past the written language barrier. There was no proof. No reason to believe this wasn't some kind of elaborate hoax. _But still—I've never seen a craft move like that_.

Lib glanced at Deanne again. The urge to run off and call Vika was powerful.

* * *

 

**

As it turned out, that was all the official information that they had for the next six hours and more that they sheltered in place. Some intrepid souls ventured back to their desks or vending machines for food, and people got bitchy about the bathroom situation, but for six hours they pretty much just did not move.

Instead, everybody got on their phones.

The Internet had a collective meltdown; servers went down worldwide under the flood. Reddit crashed. YouTube crashed. Even Google crashed, for a little bit. All news sites, in the short periods of time they were not crashed, had the same things to say, and all the pundits were equally incredulous that fictional ships could exist (for all the good that did, because with the exception of Stephen Colbert, hardly any of them knew jackshit about Star Wars); Lib even checked the Iranian news, and though Tehran hadn’t seen a TIE-Fighter, they weighed in. Because of the overuse of news, somebody had brought back a TV and they watched the news in silence.

As it turned out, DC, London, Juba, and Beijing were not the only city to witness a TIE-Fighter. Moscow, Tokyo, Rio, and New Delhi had also seen ones of their own within an hour of each other just after the initial series; the rumor was it was only over Beijing that fighters had scored a hit on one of the ships, but the TIE-Fighter shook off the attack in a way that betrayed a shield, and swooped high, vanishing into the upper atmosphere like all the rest. 

Some more remote locations also reported sightings, including rumors over ISIS-held Syria, and confirmed sightings over the West Bank, and Afghanistan, and parts of sub-Saharan Africa; video proof only existed in the Afghan, West Bank, and sub-Saharan Africa cases, but the lattermost was blurry and distant. There were a lot of rumors.

The UN was in an emergency session; things were bad and getting worse. International hotspots were flaring up in response; the total death toll directly blamed on these incidents was rising. It was a frightening thing to watch, helpless in a stairwell.

The images instantly became the topic of dissection and debate, particularly online, where the more useful analysis was to be had. The ships had shields, as demonstrated by events in Beijing, which automatically ruled out OT TIEs. The Internet quickly spat out the verdict, soon parroted by the news stations, who had been flailing in utter uselessness until then: First Order TIE-Fighters, in fact Special Forces First Order TIE-Fighters based on the red plating on the side of the ball and a few other specifics. A million Star Wars fanatics had lived for the day they could put their knowledge to use.

Surely, the craziest thing said that day in the UN to go down in history should have been when the US was asked, in an incredibly out of character question by the Japanese Ambassador to the UN, if, as the origin nation for all things Star Wars, this wasn’t some test they were doing.

But the US Ambassador’s tactless response drew howling complaints. “No,” he retorted, “Are y’all making giant robots or sending out Godzilla?”

However, this was immediately trumped when he looked at the German Ambassador: “I guess we ought to ask you guys if you have a stash of Nazi zombies hidden somewhere for emergencies.” 

The German Ambassador’s expression was priceless; one did not have to be a lip-reader to see the involuntary _“Arschloch!”_ that emerged from behind gritted teeth. There were already memes, which had to be the first time in its history that the UN actually interested anyone but poli sci nerds.

 _If_ _this isn't a prelude to invasion_ _by the First Order, we’re going to end up killing ourselves_. Best case scenario, the First Order decided they didn’t want to touch the giant ball of stupid that was Earth.

If Lib had to characterize those six hours between sighting and release, she would call them _boring_. Boring, and interminable, and never-changing, with that latent undercurrent of anticipation and unknown that sent wheels spinning in mud, flinging shit everywhere, digging deeper into the shit, and getting precisely nowhere. They didn’t know anything, they didn’t get anywhere, but there was a lot of hypothesis and tinfoiling.

Hardly anyone had woken up that morning knowing what NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office was (and then, they all felt horrible for not knowing that it was a real thing); now, a conga line of commentators from every walk of life, on various news stations, every major country’s space agency from NASA to the ESA to the CNSA to the Roscosmos, even JAXA, was paraded and interrogated, though they rarely said much except _we don't know_ in a general sense, which of course led to rampant speculation that they knew more than they were saying.

Disney rejected the idea that this was some insane publicity stunt; George Lucas and every actor involved in the series expressed sincere confusion. Domhnall Gleeson, bearded, ginger, and Irish, who was usually very warm and nice in interviews, appeared taken aback at being collared and asked about his role as Armitage Hux in this context; he said something about how he had no idea, that it was beyond his reckoning. But he did point out that the First Order was not just Hux and one ship, or planetary space station.

But as for official sources?— _Complete radio silence_ , except that annoying vague language they used when they had to say something but didn’t want to say anything.

Finally and quite suddenly, the shelter-in-place order was upturned, and they were allowed to leave.

It took them thirty minutes to take the stairs with everyone else, and the early evening air was chilly on their skin after being stuck inside a hotbox for so long.

“We should get you back to your office,” Lib said to Deanne as they stepped out onto the crowded sidewalk. “I’ve already got in touch with Hank. He’s sending Noah ‘round with the car…Ah.” She nodded further down, at a waiting black sedan in front of which stood Noah. “There he is.” She waved to make it clear she had seen them. _How did he get here so quickly?_

“I’ll be glad to get home after today,” Deanne said, walking just ahead of Lib. “Will you be alright tonight? You live alone, don’t you?”

“Yes. I’ll be alright, thank you for your concern.”

Deanne would never prod her to more than a superficial level; Lib was a paid subordinate, not a friend, and had learned to love the wall between work and private life.

She walked with Deanne to the car, then held the door open for her. Once Deanne was safely inside, Noah smiled at her.

“You drive,” he said, tossing her the keys. “I hate traffic jams.”

“Gladly.”

Lib might not have been much use for presence, intimidation, or—well, anything security was normally good for; she was nothing special with a weapon, either, but she was patient and careful and liked driving a lot more than anyone else working for Deanne. She did the jobs the rest of them hated.

She was patient and careful in navigating the sedan through DC’s choked streets as all the buildings let out at once and everyone was trying to escape at once, but it took her nearly two hours to drive what would normally have taken not more than fifteen minutes. She dropped Noah, Deanne, and Walt off near the Capitol, then drove off to find a parking place and make the trek back to the Capitol from wherever that parking place turned out to be. It would take a while, and she called Vika on the Bluetooth.

Vika picked up on the fourth ring.

“I didn’t know if you would still be at work,” Lib said.

“We’re still here, don’t know when we can go home,” Vika said.

“Well, tell me this isn't something I need to worry my pretty little head over.”

 Vika was silent for a second. “It might be an appropriate moment to panic,” she whispered.

 “Like, what shit is going down?!”

 “I can't tell you.”

 “I just saw a fucking TIE-Fighter get shot at. That shit is all over fucking Fox and CNN and BBC and goddamn Al Jazeera. I just spent six hours sitting there and listening to the same stuff on repeat. Do not tell me...I thought I was seeing shit. Like a hallucination.”

 “Yeah, well, you weren't,” Vika replied tersely. "Seeing shit."

 “They sent fighters after it. They shot a missile over DC. I saw them discharge a fucking live missile over the US capital. With people in it. No evacuation. At a TIE-Fighter, Vika.” Lib felt herself shiver. “Jesus fucking Christ, it's like a bad fanfiction.”

 “You _saw_ it? Like with your own two eyes? What—Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I still saw it—”

“Seriously _, are you okay?_ ”

 Lib sensed Vika’s pointed and rushed attempt to change the subject in her voice, and she let it go.

 “Me and half the fucking city, I bet. I'm fine. We’re just getting out, they had us shelter-in-place for six hours. My ass hurts from sitting on concrete.”

 “Norris says he hasn't seen anything like it since 9/11. All military bases around the world are on total lockdown. Total River City. Air traffic in the US has been grounded.” Lib had known the last one, but…

 “Christfuck.” Lib had been 13 during 9/11, and though it had been about twenty years still remembered the aftermath with vivid anxiety: that heady mix of hysteria and chauvinism that led right down the primrose path to bad decisions—ones they blamed Bush for, but that was nothing but an excuse meant to let people avoid self-reflection. She raked shaking fingers through her bobbed hair. A stray plane drifting into restricted airspace would have made national news. A TIE-Fighter…TIE-Fighters seen around the world…

 _Did I say this felt like stirring the pot? This is setting shit on fire._ Lib managed to swallow past the terrified lump in her throat.

 “I've got to go, Lib. Stay safe, okay?”

 “When you say it like that, you scare me.”

 Lib expected Vika to laugh, and when she didn't, Lib decided she needed a cigarette and four fingers of whiskey. Like an hour ago. _The sooner I get home, the better_. But that was still hours away, probably.

 She hung up and Lib could do nothing but drum her fingers on her steering wheel, gazing out across an endless fleet of bumpers, stretching into the planned chaos that was the capital as the sun set. Between two buildings, she could just barely see the Washington Monument poking up in the distant red. In the darker half of the sky, the stars were just coming out.

 _I wonder where they came from. I wonder what they want_.

**Author's Note:**

> NGO: Non-Governmental Organization; a non-profit unaligned with any particular state or governmental body. Education is only one of many different fields an NGO can be active in.
> 
> SFRC: Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, basically the committee that leads US foreign policy making and debate in the US Senate (which if you're not from the US is the upper house of the US Congress)
> 
> NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office: This is a real thing but usually involves itself with asteroids and shit
> 
> ESA: European Space Agency, landed Philae on a comet in late 2014
> 
> CNSA: China Naitonal Space Administration, China's space agency
> 
> Roscosmos: Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities, Russia's space agency
> 
> JAXA: Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Japan's space agency
> 
> River City: US military jargon. Implies communications shutdown


End file.
